Steven Conn, “Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century” (Oxford UP, 2014)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Nov 12, 2014 · 55m

Americans have a paradoxical relationship with cities, Steven Conn argues in his new book,Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2014). Nearly three-quarters of the population lives near an urban center, the result of a centuries-old, global trend that reflects not just industrialization but the role cities have played as engines of economic, social, cultural, intellectual, and political life. Yet two-thirds of this “metropolitan” demographic–half the nation–chooses to reside in the suburbs, and over the years a remarkably consistent and…